Milo Fine’s Ikebana contains some of the music I liked best in 2004. Unfortunately, it also contains a healthy dollop of music I find pretty lackluster. This is partly due, I think, to Martin Davidson’s decision to put out a two- rather than single-disc release of the recent “Free Radicals” series emanating from Fine’s 2003 trip to London. It is also due in part to Fine’s limits as multi-instrumentalist. He’s simply much better on piano and clarinet than he is on drums. Finally, I think, some of the blame for inconsistency must be laid at the feet of Roger Turner, who “generously loaned his drum set to Fine for all of his ‘London Encounters’”. Presumably, had there been no traps set handy, Fine would have participated more on piano and clarinet and this would have been a more uniformly high quality release.

The opening piece on the first disc, a 38-minute improv for Fine, Angharad Davies (violin), Philipp Wachsmann (violin and electronics), Simon Fell (bass), Marcio Mattos (bass), Tony Wren (bass), Matt Hutchinson (synthesizer and electronics), and Marj McDaid (vocals) is very good until at about the 19-minute mark when it begins to suffer from Fine’s contributions on drums. Given the instrumentation, one might expect a bottom-heavy sound, but, in fact, pitches as well as timbres are balanced very nicely. Because of the number of players involved I was expecting a certain amount of gristle, but there’s no mud, muck, or murk to report until about the aforementioned 19-minute mark.

I think Fine’s model on traps may be John Stevens, but Fine’s both too heavy-handed and too bumptious. Where Stevens would crackle, pause, jingle, and crunch, Fine seems sometimes to forget the overall approach his ensemble is taking and simply bang about. Everyone else is very good throughout the piece though, and, as indicated, Fine is great on his other axes, so “April Radicals” is certainly a success. It’s lucid and cogent: Sparser and more crystalline than Evan Parker’s With Strings or Jon Rose’s Strung, but equally winning.

The two seven-minute clarinet duos with Alex Ward that follow that concert recording are, to me, absolutely stunning. To get the idea, imagine Stravinsky’s “Three Pieces” being performed by two clarinetists—one playing it sometimes straight and sometimes backwards, two octaves up, while the other alternates between playing the piece upside down at double speed, and blowing an impressionistic take on the work into a basin of warm beer. Like the best of ROVA, it’s spunky and exhilarating. Everything on the set after the top-notch big group performance and these tour de force duos is somewhat anti-climactic: Some highlights remain, but none of these are on disc one.

The second CD contains “virtually the whole of” a May Free Radicals concert, a 79-minute recording involving Fine, Charlotte Hug (viola), Marcio Mattos (cello), Wren (bass), Hugh Davies (invented instruments), and Wachsmann (violin), who showed up too late to participate on the first cut. Like the large-ensemble concert from the prior month, this performance is generally excellent when Fine sticks to piano or clarinet (or sits out), but often considerably less so at other times. (Tracks two and three seem to me particularly clunky/lumpy.)

Interestingly, in spite of its higher-pitched instrumentation, the May concert may be the less shimmering of the two performances. Like the earlier gig, however, it is admirably limpid and transparent. For those who think Fine is nothing but a banger or Cecil imitator on keyboards, I recommend the balladic track four, and for those who enjoy the Ligeti and Penderecki string quartets, try the positively whirling track five. That section of the gig also nicely demonstrates how apt this group of string players is at providing whatever percussion it needs without any outside assistance, thank you.

On the other hand, early in the lengthy fourth track, while Fine sometimes seems to be playing clarinet with one hand and drums with the other, I found myself idly wondering how Milo’s life would have turned out if he’d had the misfortune of finding himself a bit more in the Paul Wittgenstein mold. Anyhow, let this be a lesson to us all: Be careful what you dream before you borrow somebody’s drum set in London!